Bill Tierney: In an election year, November in for a honeymoon

November is really deeply dark and disturbing. If anyone is going to feel sad, this is surely the month for it. After all of October’s municipal excitement, everyone is catching breath, winners and losers.

If you are feeling a bit confused, spare a thought for John Meaney in Kirkland and George MacLeish in Senneville. They have been retired by their fellow residents.

From 10-hour days, they are suddenly both retired after years of service.

In case you hadn’t noticed, the warm fall season has slumped into darkness and we have officially interfered with time to share out what light’s left.

And I have several good, sensitive, sensible friends who are sporting their Movember moustaches to remind us all about prostate and testicular cancer and other masculine maladies (mental health, the official Movember website suggests). The Movember Mustachios look like Clark Gable in old black-and-white movies on Netflix. All very grim. Many of us are looking forward to Dec. 1, when those hairy lips can be shaved clean.

What would we have done without municipal elections to keep us all amused up to the third day of the dark month this year? And then there have been those swearingin ceremonies, which are so full of hope, of new beginnings, of sandwiches, wraps and cheap red wine? From the darkness of the campaigns shall come light! There’s still time for new councillors to go through that list of promises of municipal projects that appeared under their names in official brochures. Promises will probably be put away in a drawer during the budget planning process, which each new council has to come to grips with right away. It is surprising how many projects vanish during the budget process. The water tower in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, for example. Back to the bottom of the capital list until 2017.

It is the one great advantage of being defeated: you don’t have to fight for all the projects you were proposing! And then came Remembrance Day. On Nov. 11, we all thought about soldiers we’ve known. I personally thought about my late Irish uncle who served in the RAF during the Second World War and, for his troubles, got himself interned in Java under Japanese occupation. He also earned one of those royal awards which, on his return to life in Ireland, he never mentioned again. He was scarred for life by that experience.

Then I think of the young Canadian soldier I recently met running a bed and breakfast in Fredericton. He served twice in Afghanistan as part of a bomb-disposal unit. His second tour ended when he was caught up in an explosion caused by a roadside attack on an armoured vehicle he was in.

He doesn’t know how he survived, but there he is, traumatized, part of a self-help group of fellow soldiers making lives for themselves after their different trauma. He has nightmare memories of crowded streets, of thousands of people wearing large flowing clothes, everyone a potential bomber.

You can just imagine how he feels about dress code. He’d ban anything you could hide a bomb under.

Then to think of all the veterans who have passed through Ste-Anne’s Hospital since it opened its doors toward the end of the First World War. For more than 10 years I taught a communication course at the veterans hospital, bringing in, I calculate, 1,500 West Island students to visit veterans and learn how to interact with people suffering from various forms of dementia.

There are still two John Abbott teachers working with the hospital’s psychology department bringing 80 students a semester to visit the last of our Second World War veterans.

Ste-Anne is special ground: Thousands of our veterans have lived out their lives and died on that ground.

Maybe that’s why November is so dark: to remind us of war, of discord, of dysfunctional lives, of the dark side of life.

When you can get past it, there’s the solstice just ahead, then light makes a comeback. At Christmas we light up our towns, then New Year’s rocks with its promises of rebirth, and we march into January and the brilliant white light of winter.

And we all have our town budgets wrapped up and our tax rates settled, and suddenly it’s business as usual at our town halls. And we all expect our new councils to be perfect, and they never are.

Have a happy honeymoon!

Bill Tierney is a former mayor of Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue. billtierney@videotron.ca

This Week's Flyers

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.